During the last years, an increasing number of newly arrived children and youth have arrived in Sweden from other continents. This migration constitutes, for the Swedish society, a new form of mobility, and challenges some of the established child protection systems constructed for acting within the geographical framework of the nation state. The taken for granted assumptions made by these institutions concerning their protective task and role, are questioned by the existence of children and youth, who assume an independent role and use mobility in their effort to improve their life project. In the project, we are studying how unaccompanied minors and young people describe their encounters with the protection systems in Sweden, and the institutionalized responses of these systems. We are especially interested of how the educational system deals with these challenges, and will therefore especially look at how child mobility is perceived and incorporated in the daily schoolwork and how children use mobility in their daily school lives.

Conference

Association of American Geographers at the AAG Annual Meeting (29/3-1/4 2016 : San Francisco, USA)